City fires top executive in wake of leaked email scandal

The City of Guelph has fired Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Mark Amorosi.

In a news release the city said it has "ended its relationship" with Amorosi, who is taking the blame for what the city called the “inadvertent” release of over 50,000 email items to a former employee suing the city for $1 million for wrongful dismissal.

A news release issued Thursday by the city said that Amorosi, one of three DCAOs whose area of responsibility was corporate services, is taking the fall for those leaked emails.

“The City made its decision this week following an unintentional disclosure of information in which personal information was inadvertently disclosed to a third party,” the news release said.

Amorosi had been with the city for 10 years.

GuelphToday broke the news last Friday that 50,000 emails, calendar entries and attachments had been handed over to former city building official Bruce Poole as part of the discovery process in Poole’s lawsuit against the city.

Those emails were all from the account of former Deputy CAO Al Horsman, who is now CAO in Sault Ste. Marie.

They contained countless private and confidential emails and documents, including items about Horsman’s personal life, a court filing by Poole’s lawyer states.

According to that court filing, the items now in the possession of Poole include many performance reviews of city employees, criticism by city staff of other city staff, details of legal meetings with developers and criticism by staff and council members of Mayor Cam Guthrie.

The city issued a statement later last Friday saying it is working at retrieving the flash drive that contains the information. It has not yet done so.

The city is using the outside lawfirm to handle the lawsuit against Poole, Bernardi Human Resource Law of Mississauga.

“Notwithstanding this isolated event, for which Mark is bearing ultimate responsibility, he has made a number of valuable contributions to the City of Guelph,” said city Chief Administrative Officer Derrick Thomson in the news release. “He is a dedicated public servant whose priority has always been the citizens of Guelph.”

Earlier this year Amorosi filed a lawsuit against local blogger Gerry Barker over what he felt was damaging and false criticism over the past few years that Barker had written on his blog. The city was paying for that lawsuit.

The city news release said the search for Amorosi’s replacement is already underway.

Colleen Clack, DCAO of Community Services will temporarily take over Amorosi’s responsibilities.